With the popularity of the Internet, people are more and more used to obtaining information and searching documents through the Internet. Although there are a huge variety of portal websites becoming operational, it is rather time consuming to switch back and forth between various websites. The search engines may help us to search for anything we want, however, it is burdensome to perform proper searches. Now there is a new information format on the Internet, which is called RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). The RSS is an XML-format standard for users to share news headlines and other Web contents, and is also a widely-used content packaging and delivery protocol on the Internet. Using RSS syndicate software tools, Internet users can read contents from websites supporting the RSS output at the client side.
The Internet today has a massive number of websites, and the time when each website is updated is unpredictable. One way is that, through the favorites folder feature of existing conventional browsers, such as the IE browser, a user can store webpage links of those web pages that are interested by the user. Thus, next time when the user is browsing the Internet, the user can go directly to the favorites folder to search the stored webpage links, and further can click a link to read updated contents of a corresponding web page. The other way is that, through a client-side RSS reader, the user can subscribe those web pages that are interested by the user. When one or more websites have updated contents, the client-side RSS reader can automatically update an RSS list regularly, and also update titles of the websites in the RSS folder for the user to follow links and read contents. The user can also manually update the RSS list after starting the client-side RSS reader, and then search the RSS list for titles of updated websites to follow the links and read the contents.
However, to the best knowledge of the applicants, although the favorites-folder feature provided by one of the ways can be used with any web pages, the web pages stored in the favorites folder cannot be dynamically monitored; neither can a user be notified to visit a web page after the web page has been updated. Further, the client-side RSS reader software provided by the other way can only dynamically monitor those web pages supporting RSS output and often with very limited functionalities.
The disclosed methods and systems are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems.